Giulio Genovese has published a follow-up article to his initial discovery of a common precancerous condition. In 2014, we described a common pre-cancerous state, involving the clonal amplification of blood cells with somatic mutations, that is readily detected by DNA sequencing, is increasingly common as people age, and is associated with increased risk of blood cancer later in life. Now, we describe the inherited and acquired mutations that drive this precancerous condition. For more information, please check out: An HMS News article; A New York Times article on heart disease; A feature in Science; A Boston Globe article

Christina Usher was interviewed by the BBC for an upcoming special, “The Truth About Carbs”. The interview covered what we currently know about the amylase gene and its impact on metabolism. See Christina’s paper in Nature Genetics on amylase, from her Ph.D. work in the lab.

An article on the Science website describes Fenna’s research to map the brain – first cataloging long-range synaptic connections in the human brain (in Randy Buckner’s lab) and now analyzing the conservation of neuronal types and subtypes across species (in our lab).

The work of our Aswin Sekar et al. implicate excessive complement activity in the development of schizophrenia and may help explain the reduced numbers of synapses in the brains of individuals with schizophrenia. For more information, check out: An article in Harvard Magazine, featuring an image of C4 protein at synapses, which was taken by our Heather de Rivera; An article in the New Yorker; An article in the New York Times

Amnon Koren has won the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a grant that funds high-risk, high-reward projects from creative, budding scientists at the beginning of their careers as independent investigators. The New Innovators are considered to be among the best and brightest newcomers to PI-dom and each receive a bio […]